Puck

That Shrewd and Knavish Sprite Called Robin Goodfellow

Puck Through the Ages
The History of a Hobgoblin

by Allen W. Wright.

A creature of many names

One of the most popular characters in English folklore of the last thousand years has been the faerie, goblin, devil or imp known by the name of Puck or Robin Goodfellow.

The Welsh called him Pwca, which is pronounced the same as his Irish incarnation Phouka, Pooka or Puca. These are far from his only names.

Parallel words exist in many ancient languages - puca in Old English, puki in Old Norse, puke in Swedish, puge in Danish, puks in Low German, pukis in Latvia and Lithuania -- mostly with the original meaning of a demon, devil or evil and malignant spirit ... Because of this similarity it is uncertain whether the original puca sprang from the imaginative minds of the Scandinavians, the Germans or the Irish.

-Gillian Edwards, Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck p.143

A creature with many different looks

Indeed, Pouk was a typical medieval term for the devil. For example, Langland once called Hell "Pouk's Pinfold." And the Phouka was sometimes pictured as a frightening creature with the head of an ass. Truly a devil to behold. The Welsh Pwca also did not match our modern conception of dainty tinkerbell fairies. According to Louise Imogen Guiney, a peasant drew the Pwca as "a queer little figure, long and grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell".

As a shape-shifter, Puck has had many appearances over the years. He's been in the form of animals, like how the Phouka can become a horse, eagle or ass. He's been a rough, hairy creature in many versions. One Irish story has him as an old man. He's been pictured like a brownie or a hobbit. In a 1785 painting by William Blake , he looks like Pan from Greek mythology. In a 1841 painting by Richard Dadd , Puck looks like an innocent child. And a modern cartoon show portrays him as a silver-haired elf.

Making mischief

Puck used his shape-shifting to make mischief. For example, the Phouka would turn into a horse and lead people on a wild ride, sometimes dumping them in water. The Welsh Pwca would lead travels with a lantern and then blow it out when they were at the edge of a cliff. Being misled by a Puck (sometimes the legends speak of Pucks, Pookas and Robin Goodfellows in the plural) was known in the Midlands as being "pouk-ledden."

That's a lot like the phrase Pixy-led, which described a similar action on the part of the Somerset faeries known as pixies. Some believe the term Pixy is derived from Puck. Yet another expression for being lost is "Robin Goodfellow has been with you tonight." There's a reference to this at least as early as 1531.

The goblin named Robin

Robin Goodfellow is one of the faeries known as hobgoblins or just hobs. Hob is a short form for the name Robin or Robert ("the goblin named Robin".) Robin itself was a medieval nickname for the devil. Robin Goodfellow was not only famous for shape-shifting and misleading travellers. He was also a helpful domestic sprite much like the brownies. He would clean houses and such in exchange for some cream or milk. If offered new clothes, he'd stop cleaning. There are stories of the Phouka and Pwca doing similar deeds.

Ironically, Reginald Scot wrote in 1584 that belief in Robin Goodfellow was not as strong as it had been a century earlier. In fact, Robin was about to get some big breaks in Renaissance show business.

Shakespeare's Puck

There's a record for a Robin Goodfellow ballad in 1588. And a little less than a decade later, William Shakespeare gave his Puck the name and nature of the more benevolent Robin Goodfellow. However, Shakespeare's Puck is more closely tied to the fairy court than most Pucks or Robin Goodfellows. Here's a long quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's from a meeting between Puck and one of Titania's fairies. I think it sums up Robin Goodfellow's nature better than I could.

FAIRY
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night-wanders, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.
Are you not he?

ROBIN
Thou speakest aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.

-- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, scene i

Having Shakespeare as a publicist certainly did not hurt Puck or Robin Goodfellow's career. Prior to Shakespeare, who may have been influenced by the Welsh Pwca, Puck and Robin Goodfellow were considered separate creatures. Now they are considered the same creature.

The title page for the first quattro of A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The play is set in ancient Athens - although an Athens that closely resemble's Shakespeare's England - around the time of Duke Theseus's wedding to Hippolyta, the conquered queen of the Amazons.

An Athenian maid Hermia loves a youth named Lysander, but her father Egeus (and Theseus as well) demand that she marry another young Athenian named Demetrius. Lysander and Hermia sneak out of the city, telling only one person, their friend Helena.

But Demetrius used to love Helena, and Helena still loves him. So, to win back his love, Helena tells Demetrius where Hermia and Lysander have gone. Demetrius follows them into the woods, and Helena follows Demetrius.

However, the woods outside Athens are inhabited by fairies. Oberon, king of the fairies, is feuding with his fairy queen Titania.

Oberon commands his servant Puck to obtain a magical flower that has the power to make anyone fall in love -- part of his plan to humiliate Titania. Puck transforms a local Athenian weaver and wannabe actor Nick Bottom, giving him the head of an ass. And it's this transformed Bottom that Titania first sees after being bewitched.

The fairy king sees Demetrius reject Helena, and he decides to intervene. He tells Puck to apply some of the love juice to the young Athenian's eyes. But Oberon fails to specify which Athenian. Puck douses Lysander instead, who then falls in love with Helena.

Wackiness ensues. Oberon wonders if was truly negligence on Puck's part "or committ’st thy knaveries willfully." Puck insists it was a mistake, but also delights in the chaos. He declares "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Eventually all is set right. Oberon and Titania reconcile. Demetrius announces his love for Helena, leaving Hermia free to marry Lysander. 

Oh, and Puck removes the donkey's head from Bottom. Bottom joins his working class chums ("the rude mechancials") and they perform a play for the now triple wedding feast -- a comically bad play, which delights the guests.

Once all the other characters have left, Puck turns to us. He basically tells the audience the Elizabethan equivalent of "Relax, kids, it's only a movie." He assures the audience if they didn't like the show he'll make it up to them soon, and concludes by asking for applause.

 ROBIN

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended—
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearnèd luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call.
So good night unto you all.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

-- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, scene i

A Midsummer Night's Dream remains one of Shakespeare's most performed plays. Perfect for a forest-like setting, this classic is performed every summer in parks around the world. For a more complete look at this play, I recommend the Folger Shakespeare Library's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The ballads of Robin Goodfellow

Robin Goodfellow appeared in more plays around 1600. And there were many 17th century broadside ballads about him. Click here to see two of these ballads. In these ballads, Robin Goodfellow is the son of Oberon, the fairy king, and a mortal woman. He pulls pranks, shape-shifts into various animals and the foolish fire known as the Will O' The Wisp, gets into trouble and does the kind of thing described in Shakespeare's play.

Robin's trademark laugh is "Ho Ho Ho!" One 1628 ballad song may have written by Shakespeare's drinking buddy, the great Jacobean (in the reign of James I, the king after Elizabeth I) playwright Ben Jonson.

And Ben Jonson certainly knew his tricksters. The Puck-Hairy or Robin-Goodfellow is a character in his unfinished Robin Hood play, The Sad Shepherd.

Robin Goodfellow and Robin Hood

There may be a connection between Robin Hood and Robin Goodfellow. Many Pagans feel Robin Hood was originally a faerie or Pagan God. I think that case is overstated, as there is little magic in the earliest Robin Hood tales. But still, the two Robins have some things in common.

Both had a penchant for giving travellers a hard time. Puck was a shape-shifter, and Robin Hood a master of disguise. And Gillian Edwards notes that the Goodfellow in Robin Goodfellow's name could either mean a boon companion or thief. "If you were one of Hood's archers and looked upon him as a boon companion, or the Sheriff of Nottingham and pursued him as a thief, you might consider him equally well-named Robin Goodfellow."

Since the Robin Goodfellow ballads appear later than the Robin Hood ones, it's possible that the faerie may have taken his name from the outlaw -- not the other way around. (For more information on Robin Hood, please visit my Robin Hood website .)

Puck and the Puritans

Even though after Shakespeare fairies seemed more dainty and inoffensive than their heroic or demonic medieval forms, Puck and Robin Goodfellow still had their critics. Puritans, like Robert Burton, felt fairies were devils, including "Hobgoblins, & Robin Goodfellows".

In his Anatomy of Melancholy , Burton writes "Terrestrial devils, are those Lares, Genii , Faunes, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellowes , Trulli, etc. which as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harme." (Quoted in A Dictionary of Fairies by Katharine Briggs, p.53)

Kipling's Puck

But the hobgoblin so despised by 17th century Puritans became a much-beloved figure in children's literature in our own century thanks to Rudyard Kipling. Two English children, Dan and Una, were performing a simplified version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, when Puck, the last of the People of the Hills (he is offended by the term, fairy) appeared before them. Kipling used to play A Midsummer Night's Dream with his own children. In a series of popular stories collected in Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), Puck delighted Dan and Una with tales, and visitors, from England's past.

Kipling's Puck was very critical of the common image of fairies at the beginning of the 20th century, which Puck said were made up things. "Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed!" 

This Puck was "the oldest Old Thing in England" and immune to many of the traditional fairy weaknesses.

'By Oak, Ash and Thorn,' cried Puck, taking off his blue cap, 'I like you too. Sprinkle plenty of salt on the biscuit, Dan, and I'll eat it with you. That'll show you the sort of person I am. Some of us' -- he went on, with his mouth full -- 'couldn't abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the sound of Church bells. But I'm Puck!'

-- Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling

Puck in pop culture

Puck continues to pop up in popular culture. For example, the six-foot tall invisible rabbit in the classic Jimmy Stewart film Harvey is said to be a Pooka. Of course, there are several movie and television versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. A 14-year old Mickey Rooney was a youthful Puck, a wild child, in the 1935 film. Stanley Tucci played a much-older, somewhat wearier Puck in the 1999 film.

Stage versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream abound. Peter Brook's 1970 staging for the Royal Shakespeare Company, set in a sparse white box of a stage is considered a landmark in 20th century theatre. Paul Kane played Puck in the original run of Brook's Dream, and he relied on circus tricks for his fairy magic.

The play is a popular one for LGBTQ+ interpretations and Puck is often either openly LGBTQ+ or queer-coded. For example, Puck kisses Oberon in the 1996 RSC film and Oberon plants a firm kiss on Puck in the 2013 stage production from Shakespeare's Globe.

And if being a movie star didn't give Puck a swelled head, having a moon named after him must have. The tenth moon of Uranus was discovered in 1985. It's named Puck.

In Raymond E. Feist's novel Faerie Tale, Puck appears as one of a variety of characters haunting upstate New York. It's possible that the true Puck in the story is Ariel, a fellow Shakespearean fairy (this one from The Tempest) and another moon of Uranus. One of Ariel's shape-changing alter-egos is Wayland Smith, a legendary blacksmith and a character in Puck of Pook's Hill.  

Jacky Rowan, the heroine of Canadian author Charles de Lint's contemporary fantasy novel, Jack the Giant-Killer is referred to as a puck. And in the sequel, Drink Down the Moon, we meet Jemi Pook, a young female sax player, who is the newest Pook of Puxill, the Faerie realm which overlaps the Ottawa-area Vincent Massey Park. One of the characters, noting the similarity to Kipling's book, wondered which had come first. (These novels are collected in Jack of Kinrowan.)  

The Shakespearean Puck was sighted in de Lint's fictional city of Newford, in the short story collection The Ivory and the Horn.

The connection with Robin Hood is still strong. Puck shows up as a silent and cryptic figure in Clayton Emery's 1988 novel Tales of Robin Hood, now retitled The Beasts of Sherwood. And in Parke Godwin's Sherwood, Robin takes his name from the forest sprite. His mother even calls him Puck-Robin.

Alpha Flight's Puck

One of the stranger Pucks has been Eugene Milton Judd aka Puck, a member of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight. This gruff yet good-natured former mercenary is named for both the Shakespearean imp and the hockey puck. (According to a letter in an early issue of Alpha Flight there may be a Shakespeare connection, although his creator writer/artist John Byrne maintains the hockey puck is the main influence.)

Judd's acrobat stunts fit both types of Pucks. But whoever could ever see the Puck of legend with the boxer's cauliflower ear that the Marvel Comics' Puck has?

In 2004, Marvel briefly featured another Puck, the teenaged half-Japanese daughter of the original. Also, Hobgoblin is the name of another Marvel Comics character, one of Spider-Man's foes.

More comic book Pucks

A more mythological Puck has appeared in DC Comics/Vertigo's dark fantasy series The Sandman. His first appearance is in issue 19, where he and the other real faeries are invited to attend the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. With a hedgehog-like appearance, this Puck has some of the darker elements of the legend. For example, upon hearing the Shakespearean passage quoted above, the real Peaseblossom comments, "'I am that merry wanderer of the night'? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menance-to-life and limb, more like it."

At the end of the comic, the faeries prepared to the depart the mortal realm for good. Auberon asks Puck to hurry along.

What, leave, my lord? When there are mortals to confusticate and vex?  

Go you all. Your Puck will stay -- the last hobgoblin in a dreary world. Ho ho ho! 

-- Neil Gaiman, Sandman #19, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

That issue by writer Neil Gaiman and artist Charles Vess was the first and only comic book to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. It was much deserved, and Puck made further appearances in the comic series -- most notably in The Kindly Ones story arc.

And that trickster's appearances aren't limited to North American comics. The magazine Puck (from 1920-1936 by Amalgamated Press) featured a trio of tiny tricksters, Puck, Pot and Pan by Joe Hardman.

In the Korean comics - called manhwa or manwha, similar to Japanese manga - of the 1990s and 21st century, our rascal faerie appears again, well sort of. In the North American translations of Faeries' Landing by You Hyun (published by Tokyopop), the impish antlered and donkey-eared, sex-driven young man from Avalon who started the trouble is named Goodfellow. The European faerie references apparently come from adapting the original and similar Korean concepts to terms that would be more familiar to Western audiences.

Puck on Gargoyles

Puck is also a recurring character in the Disney cartoon Gargoyles. The role is voiced by Brent Spiner (Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation) with the appropriate wit and sarcasm.

This Puck also has a secret identity for most of the series as the corporate bad guy's faithful servant, voiced superbly by Jeff Bennett. As Puck observes of all the parts a trickster has played, never before has he been the straight man.

The Disney Puck has a surprisingly large fan following. When I first wrote this article, there were many websites dedicated to the trickster and his matter-of-fact alter ego, Owen. Some of them are churches. A church to Puck? I wonder what the Puritans would have thought.

Theo and Robin in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Puck in the 21st Century

In the 2010 young adult novel The Iron King, the first of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series, Robbie Goodfell is the best friend of the main character Meghan Chase. If you've been reading this page, I suspect you can guess who and what Robbie turns out to be.

In the Netflix TV series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Jonathan Whitesell plays the red-cap-wearing Robin Goodfellow, love interest of transgender boy Theo Putnam. Naturally, he turns out to be a hobgoblin, as befits his legendary name.

A Hobgoblin's legacy

Concerning Hobbits -- and Harry: Dob, like Hob and Robin, was a short-form of Robert. So, Dobby the House-Elf from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels takes his name from the hobgoblin-related legends as well. He certainly has some of the features of legendary hobs and hobgoblins.

And if we are speaking of hobs, what about J.R.R. Tolkien's most famous creations -- hobbits? Undoubtedly, the Bagginses, Gamgees, Tooks and Brandybucks from Tolkien's 20th century novels (and 21st century films), The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings, must be distant cousins of the hobgoblin.

(The older Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies is played by Ian Holm who appeared on stage and film as Puck in variation productions of A Midsummer Night's Drean - you can read about one of them here.)

Puck or Robin Goodfellow has had a long and colourful past. And judging from his recent appearances, he has a long and colourful future ahead of him too.

Illustration Credits

"The Welsh Puck" and "The Irish Pooka" are by Edmund H. Garrett and appear in Louise Imogen Guiney's 1888 book, Brownies and Bogles.

Woodcut Images are taken from various collections of old English ballads

Puck (C) Marvel Comics. 2021, art by John Byrne

Puck from The Sandman  (C) DC Comics Inc. 2021, issue 19 art by Charles Vess , issue 66 art by Marc Hempel and Richard Case

Puck from Gargoyles (C) BuenaVista Television / Disney

Stanley Tucci as Puck (C) Fox Searchlight Pictures / Regency Pictures / Disney, 1999 / 2021

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (c) New Line Cinema, 2001 / 2021

Theo and Robin from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (C) Warner Bros. 2021

The use of the images from DC and Marvel Comics, New Line Cinema / Warners  Fox Searchlight and Disney are in no way intended to infringe on their copyright of the artwork. They are used without permission for purposes of review or comment under the "fair use" provisions. This page is in no way affiliated with those companies.

The text, except where quoted, is copyright Allen W. Wright, 2021

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